Wednesday 25th September - Lucinda
A warm night down to 21.6 and back upto 32.8 today. Showers this morning which has just made it more humid for when the sun came out. Clive did some more washing seeing as we are paying for a powered site. Caught up with business phone calls and then had a restful day. Clive went off for a walk to the beach and also took photos of the Bulk Sugar Storage Facility. They can store 235,000 tonnes of sugar here. It is loaded onto bulk carriers by a 5.76km long jetty. This jetty can take vessels upto 50,000 tonnes and sugar is loaded by conveyor at the rate of 1400 tonnes per hour. There is a shiploader at the end of the jetty that runs parallel with the ship to evenly load the sugar. You can't walk along this jetty but it's certainly a sight to see. There was a vessel docked at the end loading sugar, which you can make out in the photos. There are about 20 vessels a year that load sugar for export to the world. On February 3rd 2011, cyclone Yasi crossed the coast with wind gusts measured at 185km/h. Waves broke over the jetty destroying the shiploader and also the Lucinda Jetty Coastal Observatory. Repair costs were 50 million dollars and too 18 months to complete.